six months. no dating. no sex. more of everything else.

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Erotica: Her Body the River

[as much as I'm abstaining from sex right now, I'm pretty unapologetically sexual and not that shy about it. My therapist says it's good that casual sex doesn't make me feel bad about myself. I honestly didn't know that was still a thing. That's what I get for living in a liberal bubble I guess. Anyway, this blog is intended to be a place where I try to figure out what the hell love and sex and relationships have to do with each other what purpose they serve in my life. It's also supposed to be a place where I talk about how I'm filling my life up with more art and creativity. I think erotica marries the two together nicely, so here's an erotica story I wrote. NSFW. explicit content. not based on true events or people.]

HER BODY THE RIVER

It was only 10:30, but Mia already knew she wouldn’t be getting much sleep that night. It just happened that way sometimes. Every night, she would turn off the radio, slip into a ratty old t-shirt, brush her teeth, wipe the makeup from her eyes, and slip into bed. Most of the time, the mindless bedtime routine was enough to relax her body, allow her mind to start slowing down, to let the day’s fatigue envelope her like a thick comfortable quilt. But then, every once in a while, there would be something from the day she just couldn’t shake, some errant worry or embarrassing moment that sat like a rock in her mind.

Tonight, it was Eliot. Again. Somehow, lately, it always seemed to be him. She could feel her thoughts swirling around the little pebble of thought as she lay there, going over their conversation from that morning over and over again, trying to examine it from every possible angle.

“Yes, I promise. 3 o’clock.”

“Are you sure? Because seriously, Eliot. Please don’t say it unless you actually mean it this time.”

“Yes! Babe. I swear. I swear to God. I will be there.”

Eliot chuckled a little bit as he spoke as if he found her need for reassurance on this issue cute and endearing. Mia found it infuriating. It wasn’t meant to be cute. It wasn’t meant to be endearing. He had given her every reason in the world to doubt him.

“OK. As long as you promise.”

“Mia, I will be there. I just…”

“What. You just what, Eliot?”

“Mike will be with me, that’s all.”

Jesus. Of course Mike would be with him. Mike was always with him.

“Eliot, no.”

“I know, it’s just that he…”

“Oh, I know. He’s your friend. But I’ve asked you several times now. Just us, please? Just us this time? You’ve dragged fucking Mike to every event that was supposed to be a date for the last 2 months.” She paused. “Do you not want to do this thing anymore? Us, I mean?”

“Yeah! Of course I do. Really, I do. I just, you know. There are always extenuating circumstances and Mike has thing going…”

Mia hung up the phone. She was so tired of feeling unwanted, tired of coming in second place to low-life deadbeats like Mike, tired of Eliot putting every friend, every show, every call, every shiny thing that showed up in his line of sight before her, his girlfriend of 7 months. He said over and over again how much he wanted to see her, how much he loved her, how much he missed her, was thinking about her. But then any time she asked if he was free or wanted to grab some dinner or something, he was busy. Always busy.

She rolled over onto her side, the memory of Eliot’s face and the way he used to pull her in so close as they fell asleep together shrouding her like a fog she couldn’t escape. The pillow beneath her face was damp with lonely tears and as much as she wanted to just push it all aside, pretend everything was fine, she just couldn’t.

After an hour of lying there, Mia had slipped into a kind of half-sleep. That restless place where she felt vaguely aware of the minutes passing and of Eliot’s voice playing on repeat in her mind, but could also feel them warping somehow into some ethereal eddying dream where his words became bizarre, his face contorting into a stretched out caricature of his normal features. Mia was drifting on the surface of a swift river, aware of peaceful depth beneath her, but also of the surrounding water spitting and foaming as it hit the jagged rocks on either side of her. Her heart was beating quickly, but she couldn’t get her arms and legs to move. She couldn’t swim. She was stuck there, a victim to the whims of the current. She would have screamed if she could have, but her voice wouldn’t come, her mouth wouldn’t move. The scream she longed to release was trapped inside her head, filling her bones with echoing panic and adrenaline.

You’re sleeping! She tried to tell herself. It’s OK, just open you’re eyes. She couldn’t. Breathe, in and out, it’s just a dream. She was regaining consciousness now, but the screaming wouldn’t stop. Where is that coming from? She asked herself. The sound was deafening and little by little, she realized that it wasn’t a scream at all, but something else. A siren? A trumpet?

The sleep paralysis broke then and she opened her eyes, her heart still frantic. The fire alarm was blaring outside her door. What the…? She got up and opened the door. There wasn’t any smoke that she could see, but something did smell like burning.

She hit at the small round smoke detector with the handle of her kitchen broom to shut it up and them followed the smoky smell out into the kitchen. Nothing there. The hallway. The smell was getting stronger now. The apartment across the hall? It must have been. She could hear her neighbor’s alarm screaming, too.

Annoyed, Mia knocked hard on the door three times. The alarm continued to blare, but nobody came to the door. She rolled her eyes and knocked again, harder this time. To her surprise, the door unlatched as she knocked and swung open on its own. It hadn’t been shut very tightly and her neighbor must have left it unlocked. Mia didn’t know any of her neighbors. Mostly, she spent her days outside and only came home to cook dinner and unwind before sleeping. And she never lingered in the hallway. Mia hated small talk.

I fucking hate people, she thought as the smoky smell wafted out of the open door. There was a new note to the smell from in here. Was that…meat? Someone was cooking and to be honest, it actually smelled pretty good. She poked her head into the apartment and called out.

“Hello? Is anybody home?”

A crash of tumbling pots and pans came in from the kitchen to the left followed by a man’s deep gravelly voice.

“Agh! Ouch,” he said. “Shit!”

Mia let herself in, “Hello?” she called again as she walked into the kitchen “Are you OK? I…”

She stopped mid-sentence as her gaze fell across a man bent over the kitchen sink. He was running his forearm and hand underneath the faucet’s cold water. The man was tall, really tall, and had to bend over and twist to the side a little just to get his arm beneath the tap. But even in this awkward position, Mia was stunned into silence at the sight of him. This man was, there was no other word for it, fucking gorgeous.

He was wearing a red and black flannel, but hadn’t bothered buttoning it up. No undershirt. The fabric looked thick, a Carhartt maybe, but still, she could see that he had expansive shoulders, his arms thick and hard like they had been carved from stone or mahogany wood and polished to a magnificent shine. His chest was a taut landscape of rolling abs and valleys, pecs that stretched like broad plateaus, a stretch of plains. Beads of sweat were rolling down his stomach to the tops of his jeans. Was it hot in here, or was it just her? One look at him and Mia was overwhelmed by a desire to dig her fingers into the soil of him. His hair was dark and wavy, falling around his chiseled face, the stubble dressing his jaw and chin.

Behind him, she could see a cast iron skillet sitting on a still-lit burner, plumes of smoke billowing from a burnt chunk of, what was that, beef?

“Oh my god!” She yelled, nearly panicking again. Not bothering to say anything or apologize for barging into his apartment, Mia ran past him to the stove and quickly turned the burner off and then dashed into the living room to open the large French doors that led out onto the balcony, before using a hand towel to vigorously fan at the smoke detector until it finally fell silent.

She stood there panting for a few moments, sweat dripping down her neck and arms from the heat of the smoke. He was standing up now, watching her as he calmed his own breathing.

“Thank you,” he said, exasperation evident in his tone. “The alarm kept going off, I kind of panicked.” He twisted his inner forearm to examine it and at the same time, let Mia see it. Stretching from his palm all the way to his inner elbow was a large pink burn that was already beginning to blister. “Shit!” he exclaimed.

“No, no, it’s OK. Thank you. Seriously, you saved my ass.” His voice was slowing down now that the air was a little clearer. “God dammit, this hurts!” He shook his arm a little like he was trying to shake off the pain. “I was reaching for that back burner, but my arm touched the skillet in front and then the alarm was going off, but I was fucking on fire.”

“Damn,” said Mia. “Here, let me see.” She stepped closer to him and reached out for his arm. Now that she was close, she could smell the pine scent of his cologne, the musk of his sweat, and she became acutely aware of the fact that she was only wearing a ratty t-shirt with big holes in the torso and no pants.

She took hold of his arm tenderly and examined the burn. As she looked, she felt him reach out to the side with his other arm to grab some ice out of the freezer. He wrapped it in a towel and placed it over the burn. The smell of him was everywhere.

Mia slowly raised her head so she was looking straight up at his face and he was looking down at her. His eyes were deep green, piercing and intense. Mia’s whole body flushed with heat as their gazes met. She felt a pleasurable ache where her thighs met and she wondered if he could sense the electricity making the small hairs on her arms stand up.

She thought of Eliot suddenly and was wracked with guilt. Looking down, she mumbled a quick apology and started to back up. “All good now,” she said. “I’ll let you get on with your night.”

“Wait!” He called after her. “I, uh…Are you hungry or anything? Don’t go.”

Mia looked at the burnt rock of meat in the skillet.

“Oh, not that, obviously,” he stammered. “Let me just…” he reached out and grabbed the handle of the skillet to move it to the sink, but screamed in pain a moment later and withdrew his burned hand from the still hot cast iron. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck!” he yelled as he moved to the sink once more. “God DAMMIT!”

Mia couldn’t believe it. What kind of an idiot burns himself twice on the same pan? But then again, there was something kind of endearing about it, about watching him stammer to speak when he looked at her. It made her feel wanted and powerful, intimidating even.

“Oh god, here,” she said as she grabbed another handful of ice from the freezer and stepped over to the sink. She rubbed the ice gently on his second burn as the water ran over the top of her hand and onto his palm. The heat coming from his body was intoxicating as it met the coldness from the ice and water. Her whole body was tingling now, her mind getting fuzzy and distant.

He was nearly a foot taller than she was, so her eyes were level with his chest and shoulders. Because the sink was so small, their bodies pressed against each other as she held the ice against his palm. She chanced a glance downward and saw the bulge in his jeans. Holy shit she thought. What are you doing? You have a boyfriend.

Her breath grew shallow as the dopamine continued to flood her mind. The guilt over Eliot was still there, the rock in her mind, but if she was being honest, she wanted this man all the more because of it. She wanted him to disrupt her thoughts, to dislodge her body.

Mia didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t about to ask about the weather or anything, but what does one say in a situation like this? Cheesy lines from her “guilty pleasure” romcom addiction came to her readily, but she was determined not to be that person. Just take me! She wanted to breathe throatily. It has always been you. Yes, yes! One thousand times yes. No. No no no no no no.

“Um…” she said instead.

“I’m John,” he interrupted.

“Mia,” she said, relieved that he had spoken first.

“I’m not usually this much of an idiot, I promise.”

Mia laughed. The tension was easing.

“Seriously, I was pretty shook. Let me make it up to you?”

Mia half smiled with amusement and nodded. She wasn’t going to get any sleep that night anyway.

“Perfect,” he smiled back.

John fished a potholder from a nearby drawer with his good hand and moved the hot skillet off the stove. He replaced it with another skillet and turned the burner on again—low this time.

Mia moved forward until she was right next to him and looked over at what he was doing. “What’s on the menu?” she asked.

“Chicken and pasta in a nice spicy fresh tomato sauce. Sound good?”

“Mm yeah, sounds great,” she said.

Mia backed herself up to the counter and lifted herself onto it so she could watch him. John moved with surprising confidence. Even with one of his hands wrapped up, he was able to hold the large knife steady and quarter the tomatoes, mince garlic, slice onions and basil and parsley and rosemary, and clean the chicken breast with incredible precision, his sure arm drawing back with each swift slice.

“So what do you do for work?” He asked her, still not looking up from the cutting board.

“Me? Um, I work in a book store. Paul’s Books down on State,” she said. “You?”

“Oh you know, a little of this, little of that,” he said. “I make it work.”

“You look like you know what you’re doing with that sauce,” she commented. “You could work in a kitchen if you wanted.”

“The hours are too shitty,” he laughed.

John filled a pot with water and set it on the stove for the pasta. He coated each of the chicken breasts in flour and some spices and let those start frying in another pan.

“And now for the sauce,” he said, throwing a quick wink in her direction.

He began heating some oil in a skillet and tossed the garlic and onions into it. The delicious aroma filled the air within seconds and Mia’s mouth began watering with hunger. John added the tomatoes and herbs to the mixture and squeezed half of a lemon over all of it. As he did, little sprays of lemon filled the air and landed on his arms and chest. She watched the droplets land on his skin and felt a primal urge to lick it off. The combination of his pine scent and the lemon she was imagining made her body ache for him.

Next, John uncorked a bottle of chardonnay from a wine rack next to the stove and brought it up to his lips. He took a long pull from the bottle and handed it to her. She nearly dropped it when she saw that a couple of drops were still lingering on his lower lip. She took a couple of small sips and handed it back.

He poured some of the chardonnay directly into the skillet without measuring. He just knew the right amount, Mia guessed. The oil and lemon sputtered as the wine hit the pan and soon the kitchen was full of rich and savory smells that danced in the heat around her. Even though she had only taken a couple of sips, the small amount of wine was enough to relax her neck and shoulders and soon, Mia was laughing as they talked and joked. She hadn’t felt this light and happy in a long time.

“Can you stir this for a second?” John asked, holding out the wooden spoon he had been using to stir the bubbling sauce. “I need to grab something from the other room quick.”

“Of course,” she said jumping down from the counter. She moved in front of the stove and stirred. The sauce was thin since he had used fresh tomatoes, not like the thick spaghetti sauce you find jarred in the grocery store. She could see the chunks of tomato swimming around with the herbs, a hint of bright citrus and spicy chilies releasing even more blissful dopamine into her brain.

Suddenly, she felt John’s arm brush across her back and reach around her waist. She hadn’t even heard him come back.

“Oops, just need to grab the salt behind you,” he said before beginning to pull his arm back.

Reflexively, she reached out and grabbed his hand to stop him from pulling it away. She felt brave just then, almost like her body was acting out all of the desires her mind normally suppressed. He laughed low and gravelly when she grabbed his hand and she felt him press his face into the back of her neck, smiling into her thick curly hair as he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her body back toward his. She hadn’t let go of his hand and their fingers tangled together easily and naturally without thought or hesitation.

She reached up backwards behind her head with her other hand and ran it up and down the back of his head and neck pulling him down closer around her. Steam from the stove was billowing around them and Mia’s skin slid against his easily in the glisten of heat. She could smell the chili on the skin of his upper arm and followed it up with her face until she was looking back coyly over her shoulder at him. He leaned down and brought his mouth to within an inch of hers, but held back for a second.

Mia closed her eyes and could feel the airy tickle of his breathing and his stubble as slight as a gentle breeze on her jaw and neck. All conscious thought fled her mind and she was acting on pure physical sensation and instinct. She felt her mouth pulling forward toward him as if there was some magnetic attraction. She moved closer and closer until his thick lips were pressed gently on hers, sweet and smooth like a ripe peach. They lingered in that moment together, savoring the contact as Mia’s heart began racing faster and faster.

Then, she was pressing her mouth harder onto his, her lips parting just a sliver to let the tip of her tongue run ever so lightly upon his. Without breaking the kiss, she spun in his arms so that her breasts and stomach pressed fully against his bare chest and he moaned. Mia could feel the vibrations of his voice in his chest, like a whisper running over her skin. Below her t-shirt shirt, her nipples were hard and throbbing to be touched.

Behind her, the sauce was bubbling more rapidly than it had been before. She felt the tiny sputters of hot liquid land on the small of her back causing her to flinch forward into him suddenly harder. He rolled seamlessly with the push of her body, almost as if he had been expecting it. He moved both of his hands down the length of her arms, brushing his fingertips against her skin softly until he had both of her hands in his, one icy cold, the other steaming hot, and steered her backwards and to the right so that her back was pressed against the wall next to the refrigerator, his lips never leaving hers.

Mia’s breath was ragged and shallow, but John was calm, steady, assuring. He broke the kiss then and held her arms out to the side so that her shirt was pulled tightly against her breasts. Her chest was rising and falling quickly and she could feel him watching her body heave up and down, feel his eyes like lasers examine the curve of her hip, the dip below her shoulder, the space between her breasts, the pulse visible in her neck.

He leaned in closer, still holding her arms against the wall, and breathed gently into the space above her collarbone. He kissed her so lightly that she almost didn’t feel it, but the jolt of electricity running from his lips to her neck, down to her nipples and further and further down was inversely proportional to the lightness of his lips and made her writhe with incredible desire. He kissed her again, higher on her neck, then higher on the side of her jaw, her chin, cheek, the corner of her mouth, until finally he reached her lips. He kissed her firmly then, running his tongue across her bottom lip and she moaned softly in the back of throat. She could feel the wetness beginning to spread across the lips of her pussy, dampening the silken fabric of her panties.

John let go of her hands. He lifted the t-shirt over her head exposing her heaving breasts and soft round stomach and then moved her hands gently to her sides.

“Keep your hands right there,” he whispered into her ear.

“Mmm,” was all Mia could manage to say back.

He smiled conspiratorially and Mia leaned her head back and closed her eyes, overwhelmed and wanting even more. She felt his fingers alight on the skin below her breasts. The contact made her shiver. She wanted him to touch her nipples so badly it was almost painful. He began softly drawing his fingertips over her body. The pattern was random, down to the front of her thighs, up the sides of her torso, beneath the curve of her breasts. His touch was light like breath and he laughed softly when her skin would quiver at the contact. He circled her nipples with his fingers several times as she moaned, but made sure to never touch them, which drove her crazy. He circled and circled her nipples over and over again, each time tightening the path and getting closer and closer to them, but still, he didn’t touch them.

Mia arched her back pushing her breasts out further, wanting his touch more and more. She wanted him to press against her hard, to take her breasts into his mouth, some relief from this teasing.

“Please, please,” she whispered.

“Yeah?” He teased. “Tell me what you want.”

“More,” she moaned. “God, harder, please.”

He laughed again. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

Mia heard and felt him get onto his knees in front of her. He held onto both of her hands as he kissed down her body from her sternum to the tops of her thighs. Slowly, he pulled down her panties and she squirmed, feeling suddenly exposed and self-conscious. The air felt cool on the wet skin of her pussy and the unexpected feeling was enough to break her from her the thought-free stupor she had been in. Wait, is the stove still on?

She was about to say something, but before she could get the words out, John’s open mouth was pressing hard against her pussy, pulling on the lips and skin steadily, yet gently. His tongue extended out and moved up and down on her clit. The pleasure she had been waiting for surged through her as he licked and pulled at her with his mouth. Her mind ebbed away again until all that remained were the swells of pleasure rising through her body.

Her voice seemed to encourage him to lick her faster, moving his head up and down as he did so. He let go of her hands and began gently rubbing the backs of her ankles and calves as he worked her pussy drawing her focus downward in her body. Her legs trembled, knees bending at his touch so that she could grind her hips against his mouth. The mind-numbing bliss was building in her body like a balloon filling with air and she knew she would have to cum soon or she would lose herself in it. She couldn’t catch her breath, she was no longer in control of her undulating body. She had been trying as hard as she could to keep her hands by her sides as he had instructed, but now she moved them to the back of his head, grasping at him desperately pulling him in harder. She was trembling all over now, waiting for the coming waves to crash over her.

“Agh!” She exclaimed. “Fuck, John, John ahh…”

She lost her voice then, overtaken almost to the point of collapse. And then, as if this was the cue he had been waiting for, he snaked his hands up her body from where they had been caressing the backs of her legs to her thighs, her hips, stomach, all the way up to her breasts. Mercifully, he let his fingers and flat palms run over her hardened nipples, massaging her breasts up and around in firm circles and gently rolling her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

The world spun away from her then and she felt her body convulse, fold in on itself, defy the laws of physics as all of her physical feeling concentrated itself into the area beneath his mouth. She was being pulled under the surface by wave after wave of ecstasy crashed over her and through her and all around her. She was shaking so violently, pulled under the surface of that rushing river, that is was hard to stand up, but John reached out and steadied her as she swayed, his mouth still working vigorously and keeping her in that moment of delirium for longer than she would ever have thought possible.

When she surfaced again, tendrils of awareness weaving back into her mind, John was standing in front of her. She hadn’t even felt him get up. He wrapped both of his strong arms around her waist and back again, pulling her body away from the wall and into the concave curve of his own. Throwing her arms around his neck, she pulled herself up onto her tiptoes and kissed him deeply. They stayed like that for a breath, then both smiled and giggled in the afterglow of what they had just done. He pressed his face into her neck again. He kissed her quickly at the base of her neck three times in a row and then pulled back and walked away toward the kitchen.

“Wha…where are you going?” She asked.

He looked over his shoulder, a corner of his mouth raised into a smirk. “It’s time to eat,” he said.